Kitchen Sink Chili Recipe

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This is my favorite chili recipe, ever. While you can make chili on the stove, I think a slow cooker chili is the best way to make one, the flavours simmer all day long and meld together, culminating in a hot, delicious meal at the end of your busy day! This recipe has been updated from 2010 – and yes, we have been eating this chili for almost a decade now! It is my go-to chili recipe!

Chili Recipe

I LOVE a good chili and confession time : the chili that I love the most, is Tim Horton’s chili. For my American friends, Tim Horton’s is a mainly Canadian doughnut and coffee shop that is seriously a Canadian institution. Going ice fishing? Get a thermos of Timmy’s coffee beforehand. Hockey practice with the kids at 6 am? You have a Timmy’s in hand.

What I love at Timmy’s has always been their chili. I would really love to be able to perfect their chili, but the closest I have come is this chili recipe. I inspected the chili at Timmy’s one day, and saw chunks of every imaginable vegetable possible in there. And perhaps some objects that were not readily identifiable as well.

So I copied the concept and put in everything in this chili recipe but the kitchen sink.

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How to Make Homemade Chili From Scratch

Prep your veggies.

Combine the can of crushed tomatoes, and the two cans of rinsed beans into the crock pot, mix in the brown sugar, chili powder and ketchup. Add in all of your veggies.

Fry up the ground beef/turkey with the white onions until the beef is cooked and the onions are soft.

Mix into the slow cooker.

When the ingredients are nice and soft, take about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the chili, and puree it. Add it back in, and continue to cook it for another 15 minutes or so.

Serve with shredded cheese on top and enjoy!

Chef’s Tips & Tricks for Making the Best Homemade Chili

I am going to preface this section by telling you that I have judged more chili contests in my city than any other person I know. For years and years I would head downtown to the Edmonton Chili Cook Off and judge chili that the best chefs in Edmonton had submitted. I have eaten more taste-tests of chili than I can count – BUT I also got to see ALL of the chef’s secret ingredients! They had to submit a list of their chili ingredients to us and I did my research!

Use ketchup in your chili.YES. Almost all of the winning chili’s had ketchup in their ingredients and yes, we are talking the finest chef’s in Edmonton used ketchup out of the Heinz bottle in their chili! That is because the sugar in the ketchup foils the acidity of not only the tomatoes but the chili powder, which is a fairly acidic spice to the palate. Every time we would rave about a chili from a chef, we would see ketchup on the ingredient list!

Slow cooking the chili. The chefs would simmer their chili’s for hours on end and by the time it made it’s way to the judges table, the meat was velvet. And that leads me to the next chili tip:

Ground Beef needs to be low and slow cooked. I keep reading a common misconception that slow cooking ground beef is ruining it. Ground beef benefits from slow cooking by being turned into a velvet, luxurious beef that it wasn’t 4 hours ago in your cooking process. Check out the ground beef in my Bolognese Sauce. VELVET. And that is the secret to the meat in a chili!

Puree the ingredients slightly at the end. This makes the BEST sauce base for the rest of the chili and I am pretty sure that’s what TImmy’s does as well. By pureeing about a cup of the ingredients you are thickening the chili without flour or anything else.

Freeze the Leftovers!

This chili recipe freezes extremely well! Simply place in lidded, freezer safe containers and freeze for 3-4 months. If you want ,to make thus chili for school lunches, I freeze it in the appropriately sized containers then defrost them in the microwave and heat up for lunches.

Meat to Use in This Chili

For this chili recipe, you also have the option of going with either beef or turkey, it’s completely up to you. You can also make this chili completely vegetarian, just replace the meat amount with another can of beans and some more vegetables.

Also, while you are at it, print out my Pumpkin Chili to try another time. Just trust me. You and your family (kids included) will freak out about it. It’s a phenomenal recipe!

Homemade chili that is loaded up with vegetables, meat and beans that cooks in your slow cooker all day long for the best chili recipe ever!

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: American

Keyword: chili

Servings: 8

Calories: 514kcal

Author: Karlynn Johnston

Ingredients

Ground Beef Mixture

1/2white onion diced

3clovesgarlicminced

2poundsground beef or turkey

Chili Ingredients

28ozcan of crushed tomatoes

15ozcan of black beansdrained and rinsed

15ozcan of kidney beansdrained and rinsed

1/2red pepperdiced

1/2yellow pepperdiced

1/2orange pepperdiced

1/2green pepperdiced

1-2cupsof mushrooms

2carrotsdiced

2celerydiced

4tablespoonschili powder

2tablespoonsbrown sugar

1/3cupof ketchup

Instructions

Fry the ground beef with the white onions until the beef is cooked and the onions are soft. Drain the grease then add in the minced garlic and saute for another 2 minutes until the garlic is browned and fragrant.

Place the ground beef mixture into the slow cooker.

Dice up all your veggies and place everything into the slow cooker.

Combine the can of crushed tomatoes, and the two cans of rinsed beans into the crock pot, mix in the brown sugar, chili powder and ketchup.

Cook on low for 8-9 hours or on high for 4-5 hours.

When the vegetables are nice and soft, take about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of the chili, and puree it. This gives it a thicker, tastier base to it. Add it back in, and continue to cook it for another 30 minutes or so.

My fridge and pantry are completely empty right now but I’m gonna go with your whole kitchen sink theme here and just fill up the crock pot with what I can find and hope it comes out remotely chilli-ish. Totally trying the pureeing thing, sounds so good!

I’m Karlynn Johnston, Welcome to my Blog!

I’m a busy mom of two, wife & cookbook author who loves creating fast, fresh meals for my little family on the Canadian Prairies. Karlynn Facts: I'm allergic to broccoli. I've never met a cocktail that I didn't like. I would rather burn down my house than clean it. Most of all, I love helping YOU get dinner ready because there's nothing more important than connecting with our loved ones around the dinner table!